Kolkata: Thirty teams of quizzers participated in the Eddie Hyde Memorial Open Quiz held at the parish hall of Church of Christ the King on Saturday.
Organised by the Church of Christ the King, in association with the Archdiocese of Calcutta, this is the 59th year of India's first open quiz contest.
Among the 30 teams that participated in the prelims, eight made it to the finals with four members each. Those eight—Paap Se Dharti Phati, Sarbomongala Sporting Club, Quiz Lovers of Kolkata, Smells Like Team Spirit, Hammer & Tongs, Banshees of Answering, Shaukeens and The Dung Beatles—qualified after cracking the written round, comprising 24 questions on history, geography to science, literature and films.
Quiz master Barry Antunis, assisted by Nigel Vincent, grilled the eight teams through seven rounds, making them solve anagrams, find common links in images and clues, identify voices and speakers from audio clips and find missing elements in sequences.
Sarbomongala Sporting Club, with Bhaskar Dutta, Aakash Roy, Ranjan Roychowdhury and Amartya Saha as members, won, followed closely by Hammer & Tongs as first runner-up and Quiz Lovers of Kolkata second runner-up. "The qualifying questions were not easy and the final questions were tough. It just goes to show the high quality of questions. We were not sure who would win till the last minute," said Roychowdhury, a doctor and an avid quizzer since 1983.
Banshees of Answering bagged a special prize for their commitment to quizzing. The St Xavier's Collegiate School team, which scored the highest among school teams among qualifiers, were also recognised for their efforts.
Parish priest Father Gregory Monteiro said, "We have big plans next year as the event will complete 60 years."
"It was the most competitive quiz in recent times," said quiz master Atunis. "The teams fought with just the right sporting spirit." "We made the quiz sharper and crisper. They had to work hard to reach the finals and even harder after that," smiled Vincent.